Evening puts together an excellent cast. It is based on the novel by Susan Minot and adapted for the screen by Ms. Minot and Pulitzer Prize winning author Michael Cunningham of The Hours. This is a story of a timeless romance and its consequences.
Ann Lord (Vanessa Redgrave) is bedridden and is suffering from an irrational mind. She reveals a long-held secret about her past to her concerned daughters, Constance (Natasha Richardson), a content wife and mother, and Nina (Toni Collette), a restless single woman. Both are bedside when Ann calls out for man she loved more than any other she met. This man is Dr. Harris Arden (Patrick Wilson), and the daughters wonder who and what is he to their mother?
While Constance and Nina try to take stock of Ann's life and their own lives, their mother is tended to by a night nurse, sometimes seen as a fictitious angel (Eileen Atkins), as Ann journeys in her mind back to a summer weekend some fifty years ago, when she was Ann Grant (Claire Danes). In this flashback scene, young Ann has just come from New York City to be maid of honor at the high society Newport, Rhode Island wedding of her best friend from college, Lila Wittenborn (Mamie Gummer). The bride is jittery, and turns to Ann rather than her own mother (Glenn Close) for support. Ann stays close to Lila during this confusing time, knowing she is getting married to a man she doesn't love. Ann is closer than Lila's younger irrepressible alcoholic brother Buddy (Hugh Dancy) who has a crush on her.
Unexpected feelings surge when Ann meets wedding guest Harris Arden, a lifelong intimate friend of the Wittenborn family. A love affair between Ann and Harris triggers a fatal accident in the Wittenborn household and eventually changes the life of everyone at the wedding.
The story comes full circle and unfolds when Ann's best friend Lila Wittenborn, now Lila Ross (Meryl Streep), appears at her death bed. Meryl Streep's role is limited in this film but she adds a fine closure to a spectacular emsemble. The period piece flasback scenes and music of the 1950s add a nostalgic look and sound to an already excellent movie.
I found this film to be an illuminating, timeless love story and a deeply emotional narrative which binds mother and daughter – seen through the prism of one mother's life as it crests with optimism, navigates a turning point, and ebbs to its close. Two pairs of real-life mothers and daughters – Vanessa Redgrave and Natasha Richardson, and Meryl Streep and Mamie Gummer – portray, respectively, a mother and her daughter and the mother's best friend at different stages in life. The complete cast is unquestionably outstanding and I expect to see nominations at Oscar time for their roles.
Directed by: Lajos Koltai
Running time: 117 minutes
Release date: June 29, 2007
Genre: Drama
Distributor: Focus Features
MPAA Rating: PG-13
